Wednesday, January 30, 2008

disintegrated einstein.

When I first graduated college and moved to Connecticut I spent (wasted) a year of my life recording an "album" under the band name "Disintegrated Einstein." It first started out as a joke and I had this crazy idea about selling original songs on Ebay, which never happened. What did happen is that I had fun making these songs up all on my own.

This is where it all went down. Collinsville, Connecticut circa 2001.

Back in 1999, mp3.com allowed you to sell CD's and post music anyone could listen to for free. Since there weren't as many music sites, it actually got a lot of traffic. I felt weird listing my music under my name because I felt like people would be more open and objective about a band's music rather than one guy.

Jesus Christ, Doc. You...

So I created this fake band and made up the names of all the people in the band. Our bass player was Ren McCormick - Kevin Bacon's character in Footloose. The guitar player was Paul Proteus - from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. And the drummer was Holly Star - this came from the movie the Big Lebowski which was filmed at the now defunct Hollywood Star bowling alley in LA. In some of the shots you can see "Holly Star" written on the bowling balls. It was kinda fun having this alter ego. I had a mailing list and would even send out "band updates" sometimes as if written from different members of the band.

I didn't paint the album cover, Chris Ryniak did.

If you're curious about what any of this stuff sounds like, you can find the album at I-Tunes. If you click the following link I-Tunes should automatically open.

It's got all the tracks from the original 2001 album as well as 9 new tracks -- demos, unfinished songs and just plain ol' bad early stuff. The song "My Street Corner" is the first song I ever recorded and it's a mess because I played the drums live and I'm all out of time throughout the whole song.

A few years back I did a cover of "Czar" by Frank Black as part of a Frank Black tribute album as well as designing the album cover. I always liked how "Czar" flowed right into "Old Black Dawning" on the original album, so I actually included the opening bars of OBD at the end. You can download the mp3 from the link below for free.

What a mosh (cool in a mellow way) albulm. Let me explain how I found out about you. Its an interesting story, to me at least. The line "Oh yeah Alright feels good inside" popped into my head. I wasn't sure why and couldn't remember where it was from. I typed it into google and found out that it was weezer. When I typed Weezer in, I remembered that they had a new song, so I checked it out. A few vids later, I realized that Rivers had the whole "Lets Write a Song" thing going on. I saw your "Step 13" (loved it by the way) and clicked on your name which led me to your site which led me to itunes. Wow. Anyways, the story of the formation of you "band" was hilarious!

A friend of mine (Ben Spees, then of Electric Doormat and now of Mercury Tree; I always assumed you knew him) got me this album in 2001 and it's still quite fun. I miss those mp3.com days...I had a spot up there and I do on Myspace and Garageband now (Earth Dyed Red is the "band" name), but this brings me back to a much earlier and far, FAR more halcyon set of days for me. :-)

So great to find this. Found your album from some old music finder site, saying you were like TMBG. I got your album and emailed you about the Winona Ryder song. You emailed me back! It was so cool to me. I think I was in 9th grade at the time, 30 now. Nevermind The Mollusk has been shared many times over and has been enjoyed greatly by many friends. Thanks for faking us out and making some fun music.

So great to find this. Found your album from some old music finder site, saying you were like TMBG. I got your album and emailed you about the Winona Ryder song. You emailed me back! It was so cool to me. I think I was in 9th grade at the time, 30 now. Nevermind The Mollusk has been shared many times over and has been enjoyed greatly by many friends. Thanks for faking us out and making some fun music.